Infractions now will be adjudicated in Winnetka

March 01, 2014|By Brian L. Cox | Special to the Tribune

(Tribune illustration)

After four years of planning and tweaking, the Winnetka Village Council has created an administrative adjudication process which should make it a lot easier for people who want to fight parking tickets or citations for minor offenses in Winnetka.

The "Administrative Adjudication System" allows anyone issued parking violations, vehicle compliance tickets and most other village code violations to appear in front of an "administrative hearing officer" at the village. The new process will allow residents to save time and money by having their appeals heard in Winnetka as opposed to by a judge at the Circuit Court of Cook County in Skokie.

Tickets issued by Winnetka police for moving violations will continue to be handled by the county and reported to the Illinois Secretary of State's office.

"It is important to recognize that we're not creating any new laws here," said Police Chief Patrick Kreis. "There's no conduct that will be prohibited tomorrow that is not prohibited today. It's not as if residents have to be aware to change their behavior."

The process will likely be both a welcome convenience and a money-saver for residents demanding hearings because the current $165 free charged by the county is slashed to $40 paid to the village. Kreis said the administrative hearing process technically took effect with the recent council vote, but he added there will be a transition time of between 60 to 90 days as the village hires an administrative adjudicator and advises residents on the procedure.

"There's training involved," said Kreis. "We need to work out a solution with our parking ticket vendor."

The program should not cost the village more because the majority of the administrative processing will be handled by Duncan Solutions Professional Account Management, LLC, Kreis said. The company, which administers the village's parking ticket system, would take on the processing of records and collections of fines and fees for the new process.

"It's only taken us four years," board president Gene Greable said. "In four years and seven meetings, we finally passed this."

"This is a positive action on our part," he said. "Some people will view it as just more control and all that, but it's not really if you look at it and understand what we're doing here tonight."

Trustee Richard Kates said he supports the change because it will free up police from having to go to the Skokie courthouse to testify on disputed tickets and citations.

"I think it's also a step for civility within the village whereby instead having somebody go before a judge on a small matter, it goes to a room like this...with a hearing officer who hears the sides," Kates said. "It's much less adversarial and reasonable results will happen."